A powerful, rugged story by a new writer, depicting the life of an attractive, unbridled country girl. Susan Murfield is a finely drawn character; the brazen nature, the rebellion against the narrow existence of an obscure and somnolent village, the yearning to taste life in the glare and glitter of a great city, the artless attempt to ape the actions of subtler and more world-wise minds, the inevitable catastrophe and the return to the village home—all are shown with a realism that must impress itself on the most jaded novel-reader and keep him interested to the final scene.
THE FINE AIR OF MORNING
By J. S. Fletcher
Author of “The Paths of the Prudent,” “The Town of Crooked Ways,” etc.
Mr. Fletcher’s new novel is of the same genre as his well-known story “The Paths of the Prudent,” which was so popular a few years ago. A beautiful peasant girl of seventeen, Valency Winsome, having half-killed a brutal stepfather, sets out into the world to fend for herself. She meets and travels with an eccentric youth, Hilary Crewe, who is poet and poacher too, and who caravans about the country peddling. His poaching brings him within reach of the law, and Valency, unexpectedly left alone, drifts into the hands of a wealthy young man, Jeffery Hessle, who conceives the idea of bringing her out on the operatic stage. Her adventures with him and his friend, Hadyn Smith, a musician, her final revolt, and her eventual escape to Hilary Crewe, and the wild life of the woods and heaths, are narrated in a spirit of genuine comedy, while the story is marked with all Mr. Fletcher’s well-known gifts of strong characterisation and graphic description of life in the open country.
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY MAITLAND
By Morley Roberts
Author of “Rachael Marr,” “David Bran,” etc.